A data scientist describes how building personal apps with local LLMs has improved their product design skills, despite lacking front-end expertise. The author notes that observing frontend engineers …
A senior UX researcher discusses the ongoing challenges of analyzing unstructured text data, noting that while modern LLMs offer state-of-the-art performance for tasks like theme extraction and sentim…
Data practitioners often face genuinely novel problems at work, even when using familiar methods, according to an industry professional reflecting on their experience. The unique intersection of organ…
The article describes the author's launch of "bsBB," a new forum software built as a free, nostalgic homage to early internet forums for their data-focused community. The author reflects on using AI c…
The article announces the launch of a new, open-source forum software called "bsBB" that combines a nostalgic, old-school forum structure with modern features. It replaces traditional user authenticat…
In the mid-2010s, the startup Chartbeat developed a novel analytics feature that tracked real-time user activity on webpages down to the pixel level, primarily targeting major news sites. However, the…
The article observes that modern interactions with large language models (LLMs) mirror the tropes of magic systems in fantasy fiction, where users treat the technology as an unknowable black box manip…
Counterfactual analysis is a retrospective "what-if" method used to estimate what would have happened if a specific change had not occurred, often applied in social sciences or business settings where…
The article explains that measuring loudness is complex because it involves both physical sound pressure and human perception. It traces the history from the decibel (dB), developed by Bell Labs in th…
When someone is assigned an old, poorly documented data pipeline whose original creator is gone, the first and most critical step is to gather non-technical context by tracking down who used the outpu…
The article explains that the primary goal of code review is to help the reviewee improve their code, requiring a constructive approach that encourages engagement. It notes that in 2026, LLMs have mad…
The article explains how the author accumulates numerous hobbies by starting from a broad interest and allowing skills, tools, and knowledge to transfer between activities. It emphasizes that hobbies …
The article traces the history of "scientific management" philosophies—from Taylorism to modern data science—arguing that they all share the core belief that work can be studied and optimized through …
The article describes how a search for dashboards across a large organization revealed that roughly half were broken or unusable, with no one noticing their failure. The author argues this proves many…
The article argues that effective documentation requires a "theory of mind" for the reader, meaning writers must understand the audience's background, goals, and knowledge gaps—something current LLMs …
The author describes being inspired by their child's violin teacher's childhood story of a homemade violin to build their own instrument. Instead of using traditional woodworking tools, they chose a m…
The article argues that data work is inherently tied to office politics, despite many data practitioners viewing themselves as neutral truth-seekers. It explains that data is often perceived as powerf…
The article discusses two main time-related issues: daylight saving time (DST) caused software errors, such as Claude entering an infinite loop when clocks skipped from 1:59 AM to 3:00 AM, and the Ear…